Is intelligent design a plausible theory?

[greylorn]

One designer needs to intervene because his initial design was not going along the tracks he had intended, like a pool player who muffs his shot and needs to nudge the cue ball to get it to go in the right direction. That is the designer of ID. A designer who is incapable of designing a mechanism which can give the required outcome withoug needing any further attention.

The Theistic Evolution designer has no need to intervene because His initial design was correct and produces the required result without having to be fixed along the way. That is the sort of pool player who takes her shot and the cue ball goes where she intended, without needing to be nudged at all.

ID has a smaller and less powerful designer than the Abrahamic God. The ID designer is limited because his designs are not correct, and need some adjusting over time. That is what ID is saying when they claim “X cannot evolve”, for some value of X. The God of Theistic Evolution is perfectly capable of devising an evolutionary mechanism to produce X for any value of X.

How can you know what either Einstein or Darwin intended? That line of argument is pointless.

Because his self-assembly method is incapable of true self-assembly and needs external help. Whereas God can make proper self-assembly, with no external help required. Not only did He design the universe, but He designed it so that His objectives would be met by the operation of the laws of that universe. ID is looking on far too small a scale for their designer. That is why I say that the ID designer is smaller than God.

I am comparing the designer of ID with the God of Theistic Evolution. By trying to fit God into the constitutional restrictions on what may be taught in American public schools the ID movement has had to reduce God to something much smaller and less impressive. God the Creator has been shrunk to a tinkering, error-prone designer.

The Creator sets the rules for His universe. He sets the starting conditions. Given those two, how can He not get the result He wants? Analysing the DNA of the bacterial flagellum is to look on far too small a scale.

rossum

I seldom find a post with which I cannot argue. This is one.

 

[greylorn]

rossum

The final authority in science is the material world.

Not really. The final authority in science appears to be you?

Charley,
You had enough intelligence to create this thread. It seems unlikely that you would initiate a thread for no purpose other than to display your personal close-mindedness to the world.

While you may disapprove of Rossum’s general positions on religious themes, you do yourself no particular honor by replying to an obviously correct statement with a smarmy comeback. You are better than that, else you’d be elsewhere.

Perhaps you are 16 years old. That would explain your combination of curiosity, arrogance, and dreadful but excusable ignorance. (I was 16 once.)

 

[greylorn]

greylorn

*Does this gratuitous quote mean anything other than that you bought a book of famous quotations, some of which you trot out now and then to impress the impressionable? *

I notice that rather than address the quote, you take a cheap shot at the person citing the quote. How very *ad hominem *of you!

It must be intensely irritating to you that Darwin and Einstein both saw intelligence not only within, but also behind the universe. It’s true, they could be wrong, but you have certainly no one of their intelligence in your corner to quote, have you?

Your absurd demand that we introduce you to the Designer so you can shake hands with Him to make sure He is real is patently absurd on the face of it. And that’s a fact, not an ad hominem.

Let me think back to conversations with my pre-school offspring. Nope. That doesn’t help me find a way to deal with you. They were uneducated, with curious minds, and possessed the naivete common to children. But they had not been programmed. I’d not even instructed them in my own belief system, so their curiosity was genuine. Yours appears to come from a ground I once occupied— “The Beliefs I Was Programmed to Believe Are Absolutely Right.”

Why are you here, Charley? Ideas are exchanged, discussed, and evaluated here. Perhaps you should be in bible school, where beliefs are reiterated.

Cheap shot? I’d call it an easy shot. Those are my favorites. Why take a bead on the squirrel in a tree when there’s a dumb bunny gnawing carrots in my garden? I don’t know what *ad hominem * means, but it must be something bad.

I’ve tried to explain before, but you must have been gnawing something, Perhaps it will help to clarify, "Where I “come from.”

Intelligent Design is a stupid movement, a politically correct and wishy-washy replacement for the easily discredited creationist movements of the 70’s. That does not mean that I do not believe in a Creator.

I believe that our universe is created. I do not believe that it was created from nothing, and I refuse to blame its Creator for the sorry, incompetent entity which we call the "human soul.

I decline to believe in ideas about God invented a few hundred millennia ago by guys who figured that the earth was flat. I prefer ideas which are integrated with our current imperfect, but higher level of understanding about the nature of reality.

I really like the physical universe as a bible. God wrote that bible. He does not appear to have created many people capable of, or willing to read it.

With luck this will be our final communication.

 

[greylorn]

Please keep the discussion civil or I will have to close the thread. Thank you all.

Good admonition. Please do not close the thread. Close individual members, myself if need be, but the thread has a worthy life. Ideas are coming out of it. The Church was born from new ideas. Those ideas and the power they have given have been both well and poorly used, but they are with us yet.

Like it or not, you are a member of a Church which is fighting for its survival, not against other formal religions, but against formal scientific atheism. To many reading this stuff I come across as one of the bad guys. Too bad. I don’t regard a physics degree as a diploma for atheists, but as a license to read the only bible certain to have been written by God and God alone— the physical universe.

IMO warnings of this sort are more valuable than thread closures, which are not subject to discussion and therefore tend to smack of suppression. From personal experience, that is not this forum’s intent.

I invite the CAF to expand its police work in this context. I was recently stopped for speeding on a country back road which is “never” patrolled, and paid my exorbitant fine. The cops did not take away my license to drive (I was the only person on that road) and did not close down the road.

Selective enforcement, i.e. warn or shut down the perp’s, makes sense. Especially if I am one of the perps. Closing the road, even a backroad, is a different policy.

 

[greylorn]

Go to Google scholar (scholar.google.com/). Search on “evolution”. You will get about 2.5 million results from the scientific literature. None of those results are by me. I am very far from being the final authority in science.

It is also clear that you have no substansive response to my point.

rossum

There is a time an place for humility. You hit both. Lucky shot, or did you pay the straight man?

 

[greylorn]

Please keep the discussion civil or I will have to close the thread. Thank you all.

Neil Cavuto on Fox Business News has recently come up with a good scheme. He puts the people with whom he is arguing in little boxes, and if they say something stupid, evil, or contrary, he X’s their box. Sometimes he does it just for fun, but with an underlying point.

The X’s are temporary, and help him to manage his relationship with diverse personalities who often come on pretty strong.

Might the CAF employ a related strategy to positive effect?

 

[rossum]

I seldom find a post with which I cannot argue. This is one.

My apologies. I will try to do better next time.

rossum

 

[liquidpele]

Let me think back to conversations with my pre-school offspring. Nope. That doesn’t help me find a way to deal with you. They were uneducated, with curious minds, and possessed the naivete common to children. But they had not been programmed. I’d not even instructed them in my own belief system, so their curiosity was genuine. Yours appears to come from a ground I once occupied— “The Beliefs I Was Programmed to Believe Are Absolutely Right.”

Why are you here, Charley? Ideas are exchanged, discussed, and evaluated here. Perhaps you should be in bible school, where beliefs are reiterated.

Cheap shot? I’d call it an easy shot. Those are my favorites. Why take a bead on the squirrel in a tree when there’s a dumb bunny gnawing carrots in my garden? I don’t know what *ad hominem * means, but it must be something bad.

I’ve tried to explain before, but you must have been gnawing something, Perhaps it will help to clarify, "Where I “come from.”

Intelligent Design is a stupid movement, a politically correct and wishy-washy replacement for the easily discredited creationist movements of the 70’s. That does not mean that I do not believe in a Creator.

I believe that our universe is created. I do not believe that it was created from nothing, and I refuse to blame its Creator for the sorry, incompetent entity which we call the "human soul.

I decline to believe in ideas about God invented a few hundred millennia ago by guys who figured that the earth was flat. I prefer ideas which are integrated with our current imperfect, but higher level of understanding about the nature of reality.

I really like the physical universe as a bible. God wrote that bible. He does not appear to have created many people capable of, or willing to read it.

With luck this will be our final communication.

ad hominem is basically tearing down the person you are arguing instead of the person’s argument itself. Charley has been calling it out a lot recently, apparently not seeing the irony.

I’m curious about your view here. You believe in God and that the universe is created, but you think the physical universe is the bible from which you draw conclusions. I’m therefore curious what you see in the physical universe that makes you believe there is a God and that the universe is created? I don’t wish to argue it, but I’d like to know your logic in this regard.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

greylorn

I decline to believe in ideas about God invented a few hundred millennia ago by guys who figured that the earth was flat.

Ah, you mean that Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, who spoke of God as intelligent designer, were of that ignorant flat-earth breed?

More ad hominems? Or “guilt by association”?

 

[liquidpele]

greylorn

I decline to believe in ideas about God invented a few hundred millennia ago by guys who figured that the earth was flat.

Ah, you mean that Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, who spoke of God as intelligent designer, were of that ignorant flat-earth breed?

More ad hominems? Or “guilt by association”?

Stop conjuring up straw-men.

 

[greylorn]

ad hominem is basically tearing down the person you are arguing instead of the person’s argument itself. Charley has been calling it out a lot recently, apparently not seeing the irony.

I’m curious about your view here. You believe in God and that the universe is created, but you think the physical universe is the bible from which you draw conclusions. I’m therefore curious what you see in the physical universe that makes you believe there is a God and that the universe is created? I don’t wish to argue it, but I’d like to know your logic in this regard.

Thanks for the Latin tip. Charley evidently didn’t read the comment you added. You did your best.

I don’t have a “view.” My posts are actually based upon a conscientiously developed theory which was derived over 4 decades from a variety of sources, primarily evidential. It is still being developed, which is why I’m on CAF.
.
It really is not correct that I believe in God, despite my assertions that I do. It is more correct to state that I believe that our universe is created. The word “God” is commonly interpreted by believers, atheists, and agnostics such as yourself to mean the entity defined by Christianity. I do not believe in such an entity on the grounds that its existence is logically impossible.

However I do have a concept which defines an entity (actually a group of entities, yourself included) which have the physical potential to create the universe. They also have rational self-serving motivations for doing so. No Christian would accept this concept as his “God,” so using the term is pretty sloppy on my part. But I don’t know how else to communicate even a sense of these alternative ideas to individuals whose God-concept is rigidly defined.

By the “physical universe” I mean the entire universe, not only the stars we see or the billions of galaxies our telescopes have found, but everything here on this earth as well. Dinosaur bones and e-coli are part of this universe. Likewise my personal consciousness and clear evidence of yours, although I know you only via sequences of symbols.

My copy of the physical universe includes all the explanations generated to explain its existence, its beliefs and disbeliefs. The P.U. contains far more information than I could have personally acquired, so I include within it the theories and explanations of other conscious minds. That means, the Old and New Testaments, the I Ching, K’tab’i-quan, Book of the Dead, etc. It also includes a few physics, math, and engineering texts, and the writings of some biologists and microbiologists. The ideas of men are as much a part of this universe as are horseflies. .

I sort the P.U.'s information into various categories.

The highest level is common, observed data. Yep, there are stars, plants, people and critters. There are also balls of lightening which roll down streets, UFO’s, Edgar Cayce, and a variety of interesting and legitimate “psychic” phenomena, never mind TV exploitations. I’ve had some of these experiences and conducted experiments to verify them (some exposed frauds, others verified the general validity of the experiences).

Next level is scientific data---- readings on voltmeters, and strings of ones and zeros transmitted from the CCD’s which are the “eyes” of telescopes, I trust this material more than direct observation because it is objective and recordable.

Next is thoughtful analysis of the data. The most trustworthy analysts are those who have no theory of their own to promote. Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, etc. were simply putting a mathematical framework behind observations, not promoting a religious agenda or seeking a government grant. (Nevermind that many of these men were deeply religious.)

Scientists who have bought into an already popular theory are the least trustworthy. (I’ve known Ph.d’s who fudged the data, or left out that which would discredit their own opinions.) Happens a lot, and some fields are more prone to it than others. Biology sold out to Darwinism (both pseudo-scientific and cultural Darwinism) long ago. Cosmology sold out to Big Bang theory. Lots of the data accessed by these guys is suppressed, but much of what gets passed our way is valid, thanks to science’s built-in checks and balances.

By way of tools for deciphering the P.U. I like math and common logic.

IMO no legitimate data can be excluded from any theory which attempts to find a clear and irrefutable understanding of the origin, nature, and purpose of things,

The exclusion of evidence has been a common religious practice ever since, but as science has traipsed further into metaphysical domains it has become equally guilty of blowing off data. That’s why I like the physical universe in its entirety as a source of data, because although the source material my be falsely interpreted by men, it cannot be rewritten or “translated.”

 

[j1akey]

Ah, you mean that Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, who spoke of God as intelligent designer, were of that ignorant flat-earth breed?

This is what Newton wrote in the Principia in 1687

I do not think it explicable by mere natural causes but am forced to ascribe it to ye counsel and contrivance of a voluntary agent.’ A month later he wrote to Bentley again: ‘Gravity may put ye planets into motion but without ye divine power it could never put them into such a Circulating motion as they have about ye Sun, and therefore, for this as well as other reasons, I am compelled to ascribe ye frame of this Systeme to an intelligent Agent.’ If, for example, the earth revolved on its axis at only one hundred miles per hour instead of one thousand miles per hour, night would ten times longer and the world would be too cold to sustain life; during the long day, the heat would shrivel all the vegetation. The Being which had contrived all this so perfectly had to be a supremely intelligent Mechanick.

The idea of planet formation wasn’t even a footnote at the time so Newton uses the term “intelligent agent” which you could say implies god to explain how planets got here. At the time the universe didn’t even cover the entire solar system. Today this has been explained and observed. To say that Newton believed in ID/Creationism is taking the words out of context.

Besides that, Newton had nothing to do with evolution or intelligent design either and the fact that he believed in god means nothing and contributes nothing to the debate.

Darwin was Agnostic

Einstein also had nothing to do with evolution or intelligent design so again you’re taking the words out of context.

As far as his religious views go, this is what he wrote

“A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.”

He couldn’t explain it so the chalked it up to something. It doesn’t say god or gods, just something.

Magellen finished his circumnavigation around the globe in 1522 so the earth was pretty well proven to be round and not flat at the time these 3 people lived so what you said makes no sense regarding that. When the books of the bible were written however people DID think the earth was flat.

 

[liquidpele]

greylorn,

Thanks for the explanation, I believe I understand your point of view.

 

[greylorn]

This is what Newton wrote in the Principia in 1687

I do not think it explicable by mere natural causes but am forced to ascribe it to ye counsel and contrivance of a voluntary agent.’ A month later he wrote to Bentley again: ‘Gravity may put ye planets into motion but without ye divine power it could never put them into such a Circulating motion as they have about ye Sun, and therefore, for this as well as other reasons, I am compelled to ascribe ye frame of this Systeme to an intelligent Agent.’ If, for example, the earth revolved on its axis at only one hundred miles per hour instead of one thousand miles per hour, night would ten times longer and the world would be too cold to sustain life; during the long day, the heat would shrivel all the vegetation. The Being which had contrived all this so perfectly had to be a supremely intelligent Mechanick.

The idea of planet formation wasn’t even a footnote at the time so Newton uses the term “intelligent agent” which you could say implies god to explain how planets got here. At the time the universe didn’t even cover the entire solar system. Today this has been explained and observed. To say that Newton believed in ID/Creationism is taking the words out of context.

Besides that, Newton had nothing to do with evolution or intelligent design either and the fact that he believed in god means nothing and contributes nothing to the debate.

Darwin was Agnostic

Einstein also had nothing to do with evolution or intelligent design so again you’re taking the words out of context.

As far as his religious views go, this is what he wrote

He couldn’t explain it so the chalked it up to something. It doesn’t say god or gods, just something.

Magellen finished his circumnavigation around the globe in 1522 so the earth was pretty well proven to be round and not flat at the time these 3 people lived so what you said makes no sense regarding that. When the books of the bible were written however people DID think the earth was flat.

Thank you for the assist. Direct quotes are so much more effective than mere name dropping.

I’d quibble with one of your statements, because the crux of the quibble is essential to something which few posters understand. Your phrase, " …the term “intelligent agent” which you could say implies god…" is technically correct thanks to the wishy-washy equivocation. But I’m curious as to what personal beliefs or disbeliefs underlie that statement.

You’ve signed on as an atheist which implies that you disbelieve in God. Have you taken the trouble to define the God in Whom you disbelieve?

Is he the same God in Whom Christians believe? If so, why would you assume that a God concept invented by men a millennia or so would have any application to the real universe?

 

[j1akey]

You’ve signed on as an atheist which implies that you disbelieve in God. Have you taken the trouble to define the God in Whom you disbelieve?

Well actually I don’t believe in any gods anywhere. I’m an equal oportunity non-believer.

Is he the same God in Whom Christians believe?

The christian god is no more real to me than Zues or Odin.

If so, why would you assume that a God concept invented by men a millennia or so would have any application to the real universe?

I’m not really sure where you’re going with this if I understand the question correctly. I don’t think that the concept of a god has any application to the real universe beyond what people try impress on to me about it.

 

[greylorn]

Well actually I don’t believe in any gods anywhere. I’m an equal oportunity non-believer.

The christian god is no more real to me than Zues or Odin.

I’m not really sure where you’re going with this if I understand the question correctly. I don’t think that the concept of a god has any application to the real universe beyond what people try impress on to me about it.

Where I’d go with this is somewhere different from the usual.

We live in a real universe, and we possess real consciousness. There is actually good evidence that consciousness persists after the body’s death, at least for a few people. All of these things are worth explaining. My opinion.is that the explanations currently offered by conventional religions are as absurd as those proposed by conventional science, or vice versa.

Your response implies that you disrespect religious beliefs, but accept scientific opinions about the origin of the universe, despite that they are on pretty much equal footing. I was only trying to determine if you had actually evaluated the basis for your atheism. Obviously not. That’s okay, I was just curious. Curiosity resolved. Goodbye.

 

[j1akey]

Your response implies that you disrespect religious beliefs, but accept scientific opinions about the origin of the universe, despite that they are on pretty much equal footing. I was only trying to determine if you had actually evaluated the basis for your atheism. Obviously not. That’s okay, I was just curious. Curiosity resolved. Goodbye.

As condensending as that is, it’s late and I don’t have the energy to really get into this right now so I’ll do it tomorrow.

 

[liquidpele]

Where I’d go with this is somewhere different from the usual.

We live in a real universe, and we possess real consciousness. There is actually good evidence that consciousness persists after the body’s death, at least for a few people. All of these things are worth explaining. My opinion.is that the explanations currently offered by conventional religions are as absurd as those proposed by conventional science, or vice versa.

Your response implies that you disrespect religious beliefs, but accept scientific opinions about the origin of the universe, despite that they are on pretty much equal footing. I was only trying to determine if you had actually evaluated the basis for your atheism. Obviously not. That’s okay, I was just curious. Curiosity resolved. Goodbye.

Equal footing is a large presumption, and even accepting it your other statements still presume to know his reasoning where he has not stated it.

Why do people always assume atheists have not thought out their beliefs? Thinking them out is the *reason *most become atheists. There is no atheist church converting members, no atheists on street corners yelling to crowds, no atheists statements on Money, no atheist buildings on just about every street, no people thanking atheism on TV after a some event, etc. Atheism does not come from accepting things, it comes from deciding your beliefs for yourself.

But this is offtopic anyway, perhaps we should get back to the discussion of Intelligent Design. For this, I will pose a question that has still not been answered: What proof is there of a designer? Saying something is possible is not acceptable, it’s just a hypothesis.

In this thread so far, I’ve given links to studies where we have observed evolution and what appears to be random mutation. I was told by one other poster that some evolution is random if it is without purpose, but the designer helps along evolution when a purpose is involved… so what evidence is there for that?

 

[j1akey]

Where I’d go with this is somewhere different from the usual.

We live in a real universe, and we possess real consciousness. There is actually good evidence that consciousness persists after the body’s death, at least for a few people. All of these things are worth explaining. My opinion.is that the explanations currently offered by conventional religions are as absurd as those proposed by conventional science, or vice versa.

Your response implies that you disrespect religious beliefs, but accept scientific opinions about the origin of the universe, despite that they are on pretty much equal footing. I was only trying to determine if you had actually evaluated the basis for your atheism. Obviously not. That’s okay, I was just curious. Curiosity resolved. Goodbye.

Ok, it’s the next day so here I go.

For the record, I’ve thought long and hard about why I think what I think. Just because I don’t think what you do doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it and it’s pretty closed minded to even say so.

As far as scientific opinioins go, there are no opinions in science, there are theories based on evidence. Science doesn’t have an answer for the origin of the universe. The Big Bang theory is essentially a theory of “I have no idea how this happened” and any decent physicist will tell you that.

The reason the Big Bang theory even exists is because they worked through the universe in reverse and figured out that everything was moving away from everything else (for the most part) and they eventually found that all the matter in the universe had to have met up at at single point. Beyond that the theory says absolutely nothing because the laws of physics break down. This is a huge problem for scientists that they haven’t been able to work out yet.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

The reason the Big Bang theory even exists is because they worked through the universe in reverse and figured out that everything was moving away from everything else (for the most part) and they eventually found that all the matter in the universe had to have met up at at single point.

But if the Big Bang is a viable hypothesis by working backward, why isn’t Intelligent Design just as viable for the same reason? ID would be just as ultimately unsolvable as the BB, since we could no more show the Designer at work than we could show the Creator at work.

Why do all these laws of physics work, and why are they so friendly to the ultimation appearance of evolution so that ay last something in the universe would enjoy consciousness of the universe, rather than the universe being eternally dead and purposeless? Indeed, why would the universe go so far as to produce a being capable of suspecting there is Something other and even greater than the universe?